


Even Lands We Once Called Home

by crankyoldman



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Abuse of italics, Family Dynamics, Gen, M/M, Not Beta Read, because sometimes you deserve respite, happy anniversary we both forget, it has been so long since i've written, this ends optimistically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2020-10-29 02:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20788841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankyoldman/pseuds/crankyoldman
Summary: When all you have is time, tell stories. Or; another take on family relations.





	1. My memory will not fail me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drakonlily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakonlily/gifts).

“Was my mother even real?”

Veld was often thrown by the ways Elfe sometimes phrased things. He remembered some of the initial reports about her, when she was simply the leader of a rebel faction that had risen up enough to be a nuisance to Shinra. _They follow a young woman with a strange devotion, considering she has all the charisma of a shovel_ had been what Anna had written. 

It certainly didn’t come from him, he hoped.

“Of course she was real, you weren’t grown.”

Naturally, soon as he said that he realized that recent events could mean she had some very valid reasons to make sure she wasn’t a regular Shinra special. But even that exemplar from her generation had a human mother. Did he ever.

“Why can’t I remember her then? I remember you. I remember Nanny. I remember when you signed me up for Kendo and the name of the kid who lived down the street in Kalm—Barry. I even have impressions about what is probably Midgar, I was there when I was a baby, right?”

He nodded. This was going to be another of their difficult but necessary conversations. At least she had stopped calling him an ‘evil Fascist enabler’ or other choice things, even if she hadn’t gotten to the point of calling him ‘father’ or allowing him to call her Felicia.

“She was real, but she wasn’t ready to be your mother.”

When she scowled like that it reminded him so much of when she was seven that he had to close his eyes for a moment and collect himself. Reset so that he would avoid saying anything patronizing and lose the hard-won ground he’d gained. 

“The hell does that mean, Veld.”

The way she ground out his first name painted a picture for what she probably was like as a teenager. He suppressed a smirk, considering the tone of the conversation.

“For some women, motherhood is undesirable. Or worse.”

He left out that it had been a chance decision on both his and Laura’s parts that she existed at all. Laura’s decision to actually carry a baby to term, and his to continue futile exercises in trying to become a straight marriageable man.

That was probably a bit much, considering.

“She didn’t want me?”

“What’s important is I wanted you. Your mother and I were both adults and did what we felt was best for you. I always wanted to be your father.”

She just turned to look out the window of the safe house, and he was happy to see that none of the scarring he feared she would have had happened. Well, near her face or neck, at least. She already looked enough like him, she didn’t need anything even more identifying. 

“Why?”

“Why what?”

She turned back to him. “Why want to be a father?”

“I guess like some women never want to be mothers, some men always want to be fathers. More’s the pity when they are foolish enough to make a go at it.”

She made a little snort of an ironic laugh. “No wonder all those suited morons were so loyal, considering your ambitions.”

It was funny, if he bothered to do the self-reflection. Though he could be quite a harsh father with some of those kids.

“Perhaps it was one of the better things I passed on to you.”

She outright scoffed at him. “Fat chance. I earned my respect. Nothing genetic there.”

“Right, I suppose you did.”

By the way her eyes fixated on him, though, he knew that little tangent was over. Dogged, this one.

“I know Nanny wasn’t my mom. But when did you split? Or when did my mother leave? Because I just… I don’t know. I have a feeling at least if someone else. When I was very small. Am I crazy?”

Surely she didn’t… no, that wasn’t possible. She couldn’t remember that. He didn’t really want to go into how completely immature and unprepared he’d been at the time. Veld really hoped to get to a better place with Elfe before he went _there._

“No, but I’m afraid that I’m worn out. I’m not nearly as young as you are, you know.”

He could tell she didn’t believe him, but she was going to let him have an out this time. He owed her so much, but Veld still needed to work up to why exactly he’d failed so spectacularly at giving her the family she so rightly deserved. Ironic that she would grow up to fight the very conditions that had left her essentially an orphan. But what was the Dragoon legacy except destruction and ridiculous irony?

\---

Thankfully that morning he was given an out when Tseng arrived.

“I still don’t understand how you manage to get away as often as you do without being missed,” he greeted the young man. To those that didn’t know him it would sound like he was criticising Tseng, but he knew that it was worry more than anything.

“Until things settle down a bit more, this is the safest way to keep you two intact but dead as far as the public is concerned.”

“That doctor you sent over to patch us up was something. Where’d you find her?”

“Shalua? Around.”

Veld knew better than to pry when Tseng was aloof. Kid had enough shit to worry about. It was a wonder there were any Turks, considering what had happened. Tseng was another one of his--and he kept this thought to himself, always--children that he owed so much to. 

Elfe peeked out from the kitchen, which smelled a little of burnt toast since she’d entered it. “Oh, Tseng’s here. Hi. Any chance we can get out of the middle of nowhere any time soon?”

She was not quite as hostile to Tseng as she had been with him originally; he did after all save their lives. Veld liked to think that Elfe knew that Tseng hadn’t been in a position of control throughout the whole clusterfuck of his forced retirement. But she was still Elfe.

“You will need to remain in hiding, but you do bring up a good point about a more permanent living arrangement now that you are both fully mobile.” The relief was evident. Veld knew that Elfe in particular had been in bad condition after the debacle with the materia, but Veld hadn’t exactly been in fighting shape either. 

“Great, maybe somewhere on the coast? This middle of Gaia bullshit is giving me cabin fever.”

Veld was pleased to see she didn’t immediately demand that she move into a different place than his, as well.

“I’ve scouted out somewhere south of Costa del Sol, right on the coast but not close enough to the resort town to raise much suspicion.”

“Avoiding being close to actual city areas, I see.”

“Anywhere is better than this stale cabin.”

He hardly thought it was stale, but Veld wasn’t going to argue with her over something so petty.

“When do we leave?” 

“A week or so. I still have some arrangements to make. This isn’t my only job, you know.”

Veld nodded. It had to be stressful taking over the Turks and concealing their location and gods knew what other sort of political nonsense was going on right now. He would eventually get back into the information trade himself, but he knew to be patient. After all, what else did he have but time now?

“We appreciate all your help, really. How are… how are things holding up?”

Tseng looked almost relieved to be asked. “As well as can be expected.”

“You be sure to let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, however limited my current capacity. I owe you that at least.”

“We’ll talk more about debt if it becomes an issue.”

—-

Moving safehouses had provided some relief from his daughter’s magnifying glass focus for a while, but he knew it would come up eventually. She was bored but also owed some sense of closure. History. 

But did she truly want to know him?

Veld has told a great many stories in his day. They helped to get him into and out of trouble. Relate on a level of detachment without getting too into harm’s way. And what she craved was a hero where a well-intentioned extremist existed.

The veil had been lifted on him, but the dead? Who could speak ill of them? Wasn’t it the living’s duty to raise their esteem?

As his tea cooled beside him, in the night air, he felt less weighted by the awful messiness reality had turned out to be. He simply had to tell her a good story. And it wasn’t like anyone else who had lived it was around to speak to her.

—-

Their new “home” as it were afforded them more excursions outside than their last place. For one, Veld had ensured that despite his obvious facial scar he dressed and carried himself very differently than he used to. Non-public stretches of scrabble beaches lended themselves more to loose linens and soft hems rather than the crisp tailoring that used to make up his wardrobe. His age made a walking cane make sense, which he could use to distract from his prosthetic and posture.

Elfe still wore fatigues, though not ones that would make her very identifiable. They both cut their hair differently enough, though Veld’s stubborn vanity couldn’t allow him to change it too much.

And the beach itself was calm, it didn’t attract surfers and was hidden away enough from the radars of fishermen. Tseng had done his due diligence.

With such a blue sky and few crabs hidden in the sand, Veld had an opportunity.

“You are probably not remembering your mother, from when you were small.”

It stung a little, how she was so rapt but less sharp at the mention of the word “mother”. Then again, could he really blame her? He’d been proven fallible and flawed. It was easy to idealize someone who wasn’t talking back.

“Then who was she?”

He chuckled. “He. My roommate and best friend. Have you ever heard of Vincent Valentine?”

It wasn’t likely she had, but he needed to make sure before he gilded the narrative. 

“No, should I have?”

“He’s only the man that died trying to prevent Sephiroth from being, well, Sephiroth. I’m surprised your AVALANCHE friends weren’t aware of him. Well, his death was mysterious.”

Elfe was nothing of not principled. Sometimes rigidly so, considering how long it took to her to see him as a person and not the personification of corporate evil. She would somewhat relate to the more principled parts of Vincent’s character.

And frankly, it had been too long since he’d said his name out loud.

“And he was _your_ friend?”

“Surprised a lot of people, honestly. We were very different people in a lot of ways. But yes, my friend.”

Until some things in the present changed, they had time. And time was either something he felt almost desperate to get back in some cases or an obstacle he threw himself against.

“How?”

But a storyteller could in some ways control time. He could build a place where he could ward off disappointment and resentment, erase heartache and replace it with something noble. Something that made sense out of the senseless. 

And how he needed there to be a purpose for everything that had happened since his early thirties. Veld held no faith in the divine, but he always had some small shred of an idea that people might not end up destroying themselves. 

“That’s actually a very interesting story.”

—-

_Veld didn’t quite know why so many stupid vigilante wannabes had applied to the Turks recently. He himself had mostly been hired on for his ability to de-escalate a situation through talking, not how many tirades about ‘justice’ he could go on. The current cover letter he was looking at with attached abysmal gun scores made him wish he hadn’t been given the task of figuring out the slush pile._

_ “Is this where you’re taking applications?”_

_When Veld looked up he could see a young man in his very early twenties or late teens standing near his desk. He was tall, skinny, and awkward in carriage, like his body wasn’t quite sure where it wanted to grow._

_“If you’re looking to smite the Midgar criminal underbelly, I hate to break it to you but Batman doesn’t work here. And probably wouldn’t if he existed.”_

_The kid looked him straight in the eye. “Why would I want to do that? You are accepting Turk applications, right? Department of Administrative Research?”_

_He wasn’t earnest, which was a surprise, considering what he usually heard from people his age. There was a sharpness to him that tickled some of the more primal parts of Veld’s brain, which told him when he might want to talk a little faster to escape or cease talking and get to fighting._

_“We are, and we’re taking them here. Pile’s right there. I hope you checked your spelling.”_

_“You don’t seem like you’re the Director. Where is their office?”_

_“Over there, but I don’t think she’ll appreciate you barging in.”_

_The kid had the audacity to to smirk. “We’ll see about that.”_

_The kid marched into Tally’s office with the kind of confidence that Veld still mostly had to fake and emerged a half hour later with a smile on his face. On his way out he dropped the resume on Veld’s desk._

_‘Vincent Valentine’ it stated on the top in bold letters._

—-

Confinement was the strangest thing. It had served him well in his old life; you spend enough time in a room with someone and let yourself be the silence and they will fill it. The best interrogation techniques don’t even involve much questions, or much talking at all. A blank presence, a screen to project upon, that’s all people usually want.

Elfe was different.

He had wanted to talk to his daughter, because he had simply missed so much of her life. And it was some kind of retributional heartache that she still clammed up around him. At the very least she didn’t think of killing him anymore.

“I think you used to tell me stories.”

A younger version of himself would have tried to suppress the emotional response that washed over him.

“That I did. Do you remember any?”

“Not specifically. I know there wasn't a lot of princesses or happy endings. Not that they were unhappy just… not sugary.”

“Did you want them to be sugary?”

“Not really. Maybe a few more princesses, though. I still have difficulties with dresses.”

He thought about how he would have handled this when she was a teenager. Dresses were not a requirement of femininity but everyone needed to explore themselves. If only someone had told him that when he was younger about its opposite spectrum. 

Would they be talking like this? At all?

“We can go shopping, if you'd like.”

“We’ll get caught.”

He tapped the side of his nose. “I won't tell if you don't.”

\---

The only dresses were obviously for coastal vacationers; either tacky for tourists or a bit revealing for a young woman who wasn't used to being out of fatigues.

“Well this is underwhelming.”

If they were back in Midgar he could take her somewhere proper, get her something fancy if she felt like it, or settle on something a bit more practical. Maybe even give her shaggy haircut a touch-up.

He would make do.

“Underwhelming? Even the ‘men’s’ clothes here are awful. I don’t know how you’d even dress yourself, Veld.”

It took him a while of scanning the racks to find a few possibilities. Nothing that was quite a dress as much as things that wouldn’t be found in a barracks. An over-sized shirt, linen pants, a nice straw hat. 

“The good thing about this climate is as long as you can stay cool things will work out. And simple doesn’t have to mean utilitarian, hence my choices for you.”

She looked at the bundle he presented with some skepticism, but accepted it anyway.

“How did you learn to dress yourself? You had a uniform for work, right?”

He was grateful she knew not to get into specifics while they were in public. Granted, both their former professions necessitated a vagueness in public if they were going to survive.

“Observation, mostly. There’s a phrase about dressing for the job you want? It makes more sense to expand that to the lifestyle you want.”

She came out in the oversized shirt, a pair of shorts underneath for modesty. He grabbed a belt near the dressing room and handed it to her. “Here, this will read more feminine if that’s something you’d like to try.”

“And what if I want more masculine?”

“Belt at the hips instead of the waist. Though honestly a person is only as masculine or feminine as they want to perform.”

She chewed on that for a moment, twisting the belt in her hands. “I don’t know how I feel most of the time.”

“There’s no sense putting that much pressure on an item of clothing. Let’s just translate out of uniform, and see where we go from there. Leave the belt out of it, and leave it in the closet until needed?”

At 25 he would have agonized over the color of a shirt, alone. At least at her age he could provide some counterpoint, soften the uncertainty. 

“Where did you learn that?”

“Time. Influence. A lack of an iron, sometimes.”

—-

_“It doesn’t fit.”_

_Veld has been so relieved when he first got his suit, identical to his co-workers with a very defined way of wearing. Navy jacket, navy pants, navy tie, white shirt, black belt, black shoes. But the fit of the pants had caused him to need to go to a tailor._

_Vincent was going to need to alter everything. Unless he intended on looking like a teenager that had raided his father’s closet._

_“Standardized sizing clearly didn’t account for… well. Your everything.”_

_Veld wasn’t going to laugh but it was hard not to grin a little. Vincent had walked through most of the intake without any issues and there was something petty inside that made him glad to see he was human, after all._

_“Oh please like you don’t also get those pants tailored, Dragoon.”_

_“One item. And at least I didn’t show up to my interview with a wrinkled shirt.”_

_“I imagine you go through a lot of starch, rigid as you are.”_

_“Do you need the number for a tailor?”_

_“Naw, I’ve got one. Though I wouldn’t mind yours as a backup. Clearly they do good work.”_

_Veld rolled his eyes. “If I had your money I’d get someone to iron my shirts at least.”_

_“Isn’t a wrinkled shirt the least of our worries?”_

—-

He didn’t have to teach Elfe to fish, though he’d wished he had the opportunity. She must have learned it during that great big blank space between their separation and her militaristic recent past.

But she allowed him to fish near her, in the small boat that came with the little house on the shore. Almost ignoring Veld, but not quite scrutinizing him as she was wont to do sometimes. It was relaxing.

Maybe he’d start a garden, while things were quiet.

“So how did you become friends?”

Fishing was quite a good way for the stories to get told properly. 

“It wasn’t obvious?”

“No. What’s obvious is you were kind of petty and rude. He must have been pretty patient to handle you.”

“True. I guess to help you understand I’d need to know a little about your friends. How did they happen?”

Veld could tell she was battling between curiosity and privacy. But it wasn’t going to work simply telling; there were years of darkness between them. He only wanted a small bit of light. A small window. Illumination over kindness, of understanding was as far off as he suspected.

“Circumstances, really. I don’t even know if we would have become friends without… conflict. Knowing we wanted something greater than ourselves, I guess.”

“But in those circumstances did you feel like they were the only people who could be there and understand?”

She twitched a bit at her line; it was starting to get too hot for the fish to bite.

“Yes.”

He reeled in his line. Rowing back to shore would be enough time for a setup.

“Picture if you will, a terrible week for an information broker such as myself, just shy of twenty-five and desperate to prove myself…”

—-

_It had really taken about two minutes for the deal to go south._

_Despite what helpful rumors said about his division, violence was often a last resort. True power lay in securing and gaining information. Vincent was a man of few words on a mission, though, a fact that had given Veld some trepidation for the past couple of months. He wished he too could sit on a rooftop and watch or stand behind someone and loom._

_When things went completely against plan, when variables sprung out of the aether, few words were needed._

_“Vel-!”_

_Even his single syllable name barely made it out of Vincent’s mouth before he’d rather abruptly shoved him to the other side of the room. _

_“What in the gods damned—“_

_But Veld stopped himself. On the ground in front of them was a very tiny, very easy to conceal pistol that when aimed properly could have inflicted serious if not fatal damage at the distance he’d only been moments before. And the chokehold Vincent had gotten on their treacherous contact was certainly very solid._

_“What kind of job did you have before this one?!”_

_The man’s face started to turn purple, then faded as he went limp and Vincent let him fall to the ground._

_“I worked in an ER. Sometimes patients get physical.”_

_Veld couldn’t help but smile at how matter of fact he was about that. Here he’d been ignoring or sniping at the kid at any given opportunity for weeks._

_“That was a good eye you have there. You know you would have had an automatic promotion if you’d just let that piece of shit shoot me.”_

_Vincent knelt down to check the traitor’s pulse and Veld could see he was breathing. It was a good thing; if he’d killed the man on an impulse they were going to go back to HQ empty-handed._

_“I wanted to give you a chance to be less of an ass. Bad form, otherwise.”_

_“Here I thought you were some privileged fuckwit.”_

_Vincent’s grin was faint; not shy but a ghost that made sure you knew that you were only in the house by its good graces._

_“I wouldn’t say no to a beer after interrogating this jerk.”_

_“First round’s on the hero, then.”_


	2. Motherless child follow my voice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more part of this story I wanted to write. It's unfinished but I'm posting this finished part to hopefully convince myself to actually get it done. As you can see, I'm switching perspectives.

It was uneasy, being around this man, maybe because she could see he tried so hard.

Elfe knew there was some truth to his appeals for a gray and gray morality; nuance was something she’d had before it became about who was shooting who, and when people were going to die. 

And for the heroic cut of a figure this Vincent Valentine apparently was, she could see how a liar like Veld might hold onto certain things.

In a lot of ways the side that disliked him was almost jealous; if she could collect her thoughts so quickly, turn the conversation on a dime like he did maybe more of her friends would be alive.

But the side that, loathe as she was to admit it actually liked him? Well. They both were very very good at looking into the hearts of people.

“Alright Veld. Humor me with another story. What exactly happened to this guy?”

Except when they weren’t.

“It’s a little early for a tragedy, you know.”

She waited, because she had to always wait a half a moment to read what he really meant. Living with him had taught her three tendencies: 1. He used dramatic words as a masking technique 2. There were at least five unsaid words to every said word 3. She had no idea what those unsaid words were and she was probably going to murder him as a result.

Veld tried to distract by handling the breakfast dishes—she angled a bit so she could watch where his eyes focused. The fixed point wasn’t on the dishes at all, but a specter outside the window that he alone could see.

And his face really meant something certainly was sad, at least. And that he was uncomfortable with the vulnerability.

Interesting.

“Fine. Maybe give a lead up. Terrible things don’t happen for no reason.”

He laughed, which was… unexpected.

“Everything happens for a reason, I presume?”

This was where she always felt in a bind. Was he really questioning her? Philosophy? Was it small talk?

Shit.

“What do you think?”

“I think that if there was any reasonable explanation at all then things would make a lot more sense. We’re all at the whims of a particularly cruel random number generator.”

She didn’t have to think hard to realize that at least two thirds of what was said was said as it had meant to be. Great, this was a truth for truth kind of morning. They hadn’t had one of those since she was on painkillers.

Call the bluff? Fine.

“Is that why you abandoned me?”

Elfe didn’t realize he had the ability to crumble. Not that he was a particularly strong person but he was agile. He dodged. But the impact was immediate and she had very much gone for the jaw.

“Is that… you think that?”

She thought she’d be satisfied. She was only deeply sad.

“You’re right. It’s a bit early for tragedy.”

Elfe really has meant to go for a run today anyway.

—-

Her first real memories had been in Cosmo. And people who lived in Cosmo didn’t family like people in other places did. It was about the good of the collective, always.

Elfe wasn’t used to running alone. In the non-fuzzy parts of her memory, the ones that didn’t need a jolt from meeting the man who was supposed to be her father knew that there were absences. Not quite ghosts as much as a heavy void in the immediate physicality of her reality. There were other kids near her age she used to play games with, the younger ones who used to look up to them, and the older ones that told them what was what. It was hard to be alone with so many other children around all the time.

Did she really have anyone to miss, when all she had were people who were present, yet no one owed anything? Even in AVALANCHE, they owed the Planet. Never each other.

She couldn't quite spin a tale with words, but she imagined she could almost pantomime it at this point. She could point to scars near her left knee and recall the time spent chasing the other kids near her age in the youth center. Hold up her hand as a testament to her first major betrayal. A scar along her hairline for the next. If she could vomit up her insides to explain that, she would.

Everything was stiff, so she wouldn't be able to tell the more epic tales. As she ran, she found that the smallest changes in terrain made her want to buckle, the smallest wisp of wind made her unsteady. It would be months before she could hold a sword and properly explain to that man who was most certainly her father what she had truly feared all this time.

They both at least knew that while they were the protagonists, they took a hard left at the decision point that would ever make them a hero.

\---

She found him in the backyard, foolishly without a hat and surrounded with what looked like an afternoons worth of gardening progress.

“You’re supposed to do that in the morning. And wear a hat.”

He patted a spot next to him. “You're also supposed to take more water on a run like that.”

She knelt down slowly. They could both be right sometimes. And as cliche as it was, being close to the earth truly was grounding, after spending the time running out of anger and her memories.

“It's also a bit optimistic, planting a garden. What do you think is going to happen while we’re exiled?”

He handed her a hand trowel. “Elfe, I have a history of simply not being able to predict the future. The only wisdom I have gained is to enjoy what little pleasure I can get out of it. So if I’m going to be pushed into retirement, I’m going to truly retire as best as I am able.”

Was he joking? The world was likely going to explode in the next couple years and he wanted to sit back and garden?

“I can’t do that. I just can’t.”

He seemed oddly pleased by her response, if the eerily similar ways of their expressions came off could be believed. It made her want to shudder a bit, looking at him as a bit like an aged mirror darkly set.

“I would be disappointed if you were going to settle. Gardening, waiting, and settling are such old man games. But it can’t hurt to rest a bit, before charging into the fray.”

It was an opening, then. She’d have to endure a story, but she wasn't going to be a child about it. What sort of man planted seeds when faced with her anguish about feeling abandoned? She would listen until the truth Veld was clearly not ready to share would be revealed. But she would have to act in order to tell her own.

“Tell me how your friend knew me as a baby.”

\---

_It wasn’t out of the ordinary for some single Turks to end up cohabitating. Solo missions being few and far between made for enough nights spent on a partner’s couch that it was only a natural progression into the guestroom of whoever had one._

_Vincent, being himself a man of much means allowed for the lease to run out on Veld’s apartment. The absence of vermin meant Veld didn't complain much about the arrangement._

_It was a lazy Saturday afternoon when Veld got the call. _

_Vincent was stretched out on his modernist nightmare of a couch, arm draped over his eyes. The only indication he was awake was a slight displeased snort at the sound of Veld’s phone ringing._

_“Oh we had better not be called in--hello?”_

_Veld listened without speaking to his caller for long enough to worry Vincent, who slowly peeled himself off the couch with a dejected kind of look that only poor bastards who got called in on the weekend would do. But work wasn’t calling. _

_“Which hospital? Ok. Got it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”_

_Veld turned to VIncent, who had come to stand over him. He took a long breath. “Laura’s in labor.”_

_“Your ex-girlfriend called you to say she was in labor? Why?”_

_“We broke up seven months ago. You’re good at math.”_

_“Shit, I’ll drive.”_

\---

“She never told _you!?_”

Well ok, so both her biological parents kind of were terrible at being humans. What kind of person would fail to tell even their ex-boyfriend such a thing? Even if monogamous attachments weren’t very common around the area of cosmo she’d spent her developing years, she could at least inform someone of her choice to carry or not to carry a goddamned child. 

“That’s one way to think about it. I wish she had at least enough affection left to allow me to help her during the pregnancy but I suppose sometimes a woman wishes to be left alone when faced with weighty choices. And she called when it mattered.”

“What, so she could dump me on you?”

“No, so you could be raised by someone who cared, blood or not. I think I would have been your father regardless of genetics, Elfe.”

It felt too uncomfortably like they were having some kind of understanding. Was it immature of her to distrust this chance so much? Or was it all the losses rolled up into one, whispering in the back of her mind that there would be no happy ending until there was justice. Or at least an ending.

“Didn’t you have enough? Did your obviously less morally deficient friend talk you into it? How did--” _how did I still get left behind_ she wanted to scream at him. But she was adult enough now to know that she wasn’t left; she was collateral damage, probably.

It didn’t feel any better, but she’d been kicked around enough by the forces at work to have a bit of perspective about that. 

“It helped immensely having a decent place to live and a,” he chuckled for a moment like a private joke, “a patient friend. But there are choices you can’t walk away from.”

The afternoon was giving way to evening, and Elfe was being reminded of the fact she’d gone for a run on little more than a couple of quickly grabbed pieces of fruit. Her stomach was at least loud enough to do the talking for her.

Veld checked his phone and frowned. “Well, I suppose I should get started on dinner. Looks like we’ll have a guest tonight if his estimates are correct.”

“Oh, is it Tseng?”

“He didn’t say who it would be, just that there was ‘likely to be a surprise visitor’ and to ‘blame Reno’.” 

She’d never been able to keep all those Turk names straight when they were part of her survival. Elfe always felt a small bit of guilt about that, having an enemy with too many faces to attach to, too many names to feel human. 

Without thinking, she helped him up from where he had been kneeling. Maybe there was some point to these ‘old man’ sorts of ways of dealing. Nothing fixed, but the sting could wear off a little. 

“Maybe I’ll try and tell you a story while you make dinner.”

\---  
_There was once a girl._

_No, that wasn’t the place. There was once death. A grey death, a slow death, which spread not through disease or infection but hearts and minds. It like all pestilence first was small, personal. A darkness of the memory, a blank space in the soul. _

_“It’s alive, this planet, like you or me. But it’s dying. When it dies, we become nothing.”_

_The girl could see the death, spread out over the darkness in her own blank spaces, and decided to be the hero of this story._

_The hero, a clever boy with big plans, and a bandit without a place create a righteous army to fight the death, to keep the life surrounding them all. They were never big enough to come at them head on, so they fought from under the darkness, in the shadows._

_In the thickest darkness the shadow was hardest to separate. Many had to give their lives in return for the righteous. _

_And then._

_And then._

_And._

\---

“You can’t blame yourself for everything.”

Elfe had felt like she’d been in a trance mining those memories. Veld had been in the middle of making something she couldn’t pronounce, with far too many steps that smelled of spices and patience. How could he be so patient? Didn’t he see the blood on both their hands?

“Don’t you?”

He must have had whatever he was cooking in a state that didn’t require much interaction on his part because Veld’s attention and posture was focused on her fully.

“I used to. And I still do, for certain things. But there comes a time when you realize the extent of your influence, the actual power you have. And you double down instead where you can make a difference.”

It was really damn annoying how reasonable he was. “How can you say that and have done…”

“I haven’t lost _anyone_ since my last mistake. And I gave up everything to ensure you lived. I’m not asking you to remain or even like me. But you have to know when to mourn, and when to move on and when you can truly fight. Because if you get stuck it’s all the harder to come back.”

“Your last mistake?”

With barely a break in their conversational connection he turned off the stove, likely in an attempt to stop something from burning. Elfe had largely lost her appetite, and he was likely to very precisely pack it up later when everything was cool enough for storage.

“Losing you, an entire city, really it was quite the fuck up. It’s the story you’ve been waiting on, probably.”

“You really haven’t lost anyone since then?”

“No one who didn’t want to be lost, at least. We’re scattered to the wind, sure, but alive. I don’t know what kind of world you’re inheriting but it will remain intact long enough to do what you will with it.”

Did he really use his network of shady dealings to provide her an inheritance?

“But I don’t understand. Your job was to protect the secrets of the literal world destroying organization.”

“You know the funny thing about secret keeping?”

The little twinkle in his eye let her know she was about to inherit the real family inheritance.

“You get to _know_ some secrets.”


	3. Nothing has changed (everything has changed)

He’d probably only been fully sane for about two weeks. It wasn’t a disparaging thought, truly, to think in terms like that. The Valentine family condition—on his mother’s side—meant he believed in things that weren’t really there without medical interventions.

Thankfully his companions had the sense to get somewhere near civilization long enough that someone who had seen his file eventually caught up to him.

Turks these days were both much quicker and denser than he’d remembered.

But that was the thing about memory, wasn’t it? Wander half the damn world seeking out the specter of his ex-girlfriend, get into a particularly gruesome fight with his ex-boyfriend and realize that the voices wouldn’t shut up until he tracked down his partner.

His far too clever partner who had somehow faked the deaths of an entire division of the Turks? He couldn’t be too sure about that one, Tseng was a bit delirious with blood loss at the time. Leave it to Veld to adopt the singularly most humorless kid he could.

But the address existed, and he had some time before this AVALANCHE group was going to get into a likely stupid fight. The house was real. 

It was becoming very nice to know what things existed outside of his mind. 

Knocking on the door, he realized it was a little late at night and he had no idea if the address he’d been handed and asking various people along the way if he was moving towards was correct. This house felt like Veld. It was definitely the type of place he talked about retiring to. And it was an actual place.

“Tseng said I should be expec--Vincent?”

The time was evident in his face, regardless of the obvious aging.

“Hi, Veld.”

It was kind of the lamest way to greet his partner, the one sane person left alive. The person once he realized what was happening and had the option to he came to see. Time had left such good stories on his face, though, and it was really great to be remembered, recognized as something more than just a file left in the basement. 

He leaned into the doorway. “So, you going to let me in or do I have to punch you on the stoop?”

Veld wisely let him in.

“I could heat you up some leftovers?”

The Veld that had existed in his memories was present in the way he avoided the actual point at hand. It was comforting and extremely unhelpful.

“Veld, what happened?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“No, you first. I’ve only got a couple days and I’m not going to waste them.”

Vincent allowed Veld to muck about with some coffee though, and it was obvious that someone had tipped him off to a potential visitor by the half drunk cup of caffeinated tea sitting on the table. 

He could be patient in the right situation. Hadn’t he always?

“I just want you to know Felicia is fine. She’s asleep upstairs and you’ll get your chance to meet her. She goes by Elfe now, and I’ll let her tell you what she wants to tell you.”

He reached out a hand because he wanted Veld to take it. Vincent was relieved when he did.

“And what about you?”

“How many days did you say you had?”

—-

_They say that love makes you crazy. But falling in love while also presenting the early signs of schizophrenia is just extra special._

_Love at first fight, Vincent liked to think. He was born into a world of privilege which meant people tended to defer to him; being also scholastically gifted and intellectually nimble meant double._

_But Veld had practically sneered at him upon meeting, as if daring him to pull out all the stops on what Vincent had been gifted by birth._

_Veld was like the commander in a war film, whose subordinates developed winkingly obvious homoerotic fixations on. He probably had a whole library of books about honor which he read nightly, before he went to sleep and had dreams about tactics._

_“Don’t think I’ll go easy on you because daddy has a wing of the university named after him, Valentine.”_

_It was so stupidly aggressive that Vincent didn’t know if the guy was actually serious. And all he’d done was show up, what would actually happen if he **tried**._

_It would be fun._

—-

Veld almost made him sleep on the couch, in a thinly-veiled effort to put some distance between them. He always did that when he was anxious about something. Vincent knew that he had to have been stewing in anxiety because these were anxious times, but he knew how to diffuse it.

Medication had calmed his mind enough to think, but spending a night curled around Veld until he relaxed enough to sleep, knowing that they were in fact alive and breathing was enough to make him feel human again.

Morning was slow, and they were sadly still clothed. He knew at least there wouldn’t be arguments about the couch tomorrow.

But he was a little nervous about meeting Felicia—Elfe, he had to remember, she went by Elfe—because what absent parent didn’t dread meeting their grown children a little bit?

“She remembered you. Not well, she was little, but she did. I’ve told her about you.”

“Embellished, I assume?”

Veld looked like he wanted to disagree, but he knew better. Vincent had always been able to call his bluff. If it weren’t obvious by the stories age had placed on his face with scars and lines, it would be like no time had passed.

“There was no point telling her the stupid things. You were supposed to be dead.”

True.

“She’s going to be disappointed to find out I’m not some tall dark dashing hero.”

Veld’s mouth half quirked. “Well you’re tall at least.”

“So she inherited the height from your side of the family, I see.”

Veld ran a hand through his hair—still mostly brown, but the gray was going to win this battle. It was a good thing Veld had been so good at talking people into or out of things; anyone that really knew him would recognize him instantly.

Considering he had been put into a kind of aging stasis, he wondered if anyone else could say the same about him. Maybe if he got a haircut. 

Maybe.

“Elfe unfortunately looks more like me than her birth mother. She got a little of her mother’s height, but not quite at your cartoonishly aristocratic level.”

Vincent had been worried that Veld would treat him like glass considering what had been. And it wasn’t quite like no time had passed either but he could still throw a harmless barb over the fence at him.

No fear, no disdain, no pity. That same awkward affection that only a man who had the kind of upbringing where emotional complexity had to be hidden beneath a thick veneer of masculinity could provide. 

“Would it be too soon to ask if we could maybe kiss for a while, see where that goes?”

The response was thankfully less fight and more the appropriate and welcomed bite.

Like a lot of Veld’s most complicated stories, the veneer was a sliver of truth coated in bullshit anyway. Vincent had always been the sort to, for better or worse, get to the truth of things.

—-

_Halfway through his first year and Vincent almost wondered if he’d ever get to use the incredibly nice pistol they’d assigned to him. Or the beautiful sniper rifle. _

_It was so much talking and waiting and paperwork. Here he’d thought that keeping company secrets would be a bit more exciting. He’d spent enough time at the shooting range to practically become an expert in destroying printed paper at moderate distances._

_And here he was, being told to stay quiet and not engage while Veld did his best impression of a criminal kingpin major dealer or whatever it was that petty energy thieves found legitimate. _

_He’d almost missed the flash of the concealed and very small pistol out of sheer boredom. If he’d been less distracted he might have shoved Veld out of harm’s way with more finesse. _

_Still, he managed to get a date out of it, even if Veld was blithely unaware that’s what they were on._

_“Why would you give up being an ER surgeon for this? I can tell you’re bored.”_

_Marvelous, really, what simple decency had opened up for Vincent. _

_“Looking out for me? I didn’t know you had it in you, Dragoon.”_

_He made a face, which was clearly covering up some kind of embarrassment. Veld would likely punch him in the face if he called it adorable, like he wanted to._

_“I just have to wonder what kind of person walks away from—“_

_“Privilege, prestige? I didn’t walk away from the wealth at least. Maybe I just wanted a change of scenery?”_

_“Bullshit. I don’t need your whole backstory, I just want to know if you take this seriously.”_

_In the corner of his eye he knew something that didn’t actually exist was watching him. He must have been nearing his next dose of anti-psychotics. Great._

_“I’m just going through something and this seemed like a good idea. I won’t ever take it as seriously as you do, but I won’t get in the way of your dedication. Fair?”_

_He smiled like the most interesting challenge and Vincent knew he was going to have to be very patient but it would be worth it._

_“I’ll accept it for now.”_

—-

If he didn’t have absolute proof as to her origin, Vincent could have sworn Veld had cloned himself, with some imperfections. He checked the watch that he’d asked Cid to help him buy, because phones had become strange rectangles that contained the universe, and he wasn’t going to carry around such arcane strangeness just to tell the time.

But he wasn’t due another dose for some time. Clearly this was a triumph of nature.

“Elfe, is it?”

“You’re not at all what I pictured, Vincent.”

“Funny, I thought the same thing the last time I looked in a mirror.”

It was clear revisionist history had been part of some kind of truce, but he was quite frankly _tired_. Didn’t he have a right to be a little tired, all things considered?

She tilted her head before breaking out into a grin. “So you’re my mom?”

Veld made a sputtering sound from where he was definitely not observing, and Vincent for not the first time since he theoretically “woke up” wondered what the world had come to, and where the illusion of manners had gone.

“Sure. Why not.”

Elfe was singularly pleased with that response, and it was obvious from there she wasn’t a clone. Veld was drier in his responses to the world, even when he was excited. Vincent mourned the child he never got to know long, of course, but mourning wasn’t why he’d gone off to this isolated cottage not close enough to the beach to vacation in, but close enough to reach the water if you needed to escape.

There were reasons other than the dead to fight for. And getting to know this interesting adult young woman would be one of them.

_Do you see where you’d have been?_

He shook off the sound of his own thinking, lest he ruin the mood. No one else needed to see the torn edges of reality that squatted in the peripheral of his vision.

“Veld’s been telling me all sorts of stories, you know. I have questions.”

He only glanced over at Veld to make sure he wasn’t hyperventilating or something equally likely. Yet another thing to get used to, having come back from the dead. There had to be all sorts of versions of himself out there, living in other people’s heads.

“I will only answer the ones you won’t ask your father. Seems fair, right? Of course, that’s up to your version of fairness.”

She practically scrunched up her nose in thought, which was wise, to actually put thought into it. Elfe had to be only a couple of years older than Sephiroth was, only a couple years physically older than he was. He’d certainly not been thoughtful when he was chronologically her age.

After the haircut, he’d have to research a way to remedy _that_ unfortunate detail. 

“Why Shinra? You and Veld both seem so much smarter than that. It’s the cause of well…”

“Everything? Of course it is. But people don’t fit into neat narratives when they’re just being people. Everyone’s a… shitshow when they’re in their twenties. It just depends on whose watch and just how many fuses they have their hands on.”

He hadn’t talked this much in months, years. It felt raw on his throat in a good way.

“Then how many fuses did you have your hands on?”

—-

_”We have an entire log on every visit a major executive has made to the Honeybee Inn. Why? Why do people care so much about that?”_

_“Social capital and the inherent repression of the middle classes based around structures of morality created to stifle advancement of those deemed lesser.”_

_“Go to fucking college, **nerd**.”_

_“Finance it, **Valentine**.”_

_It was really a shame how much self-awareness he lacked, no matter how well-read. He let Veld hold onto his own notions of what was or was not a part of their relationship, because there was no point scaring him off with labels he wasn’t yet ready to adopt._

_Didn’t change where he slept, or that he had stopped trying to date women anymore._

_“Sure. Maybe you can get a proper job for raising a family.”_

_Veld laughed, likely because he never took the implied offer seriously. Class had been the only remaining sticky issue that they actually talked about, and there was so much pride to wade through._

_“And lose my pension? I mean, provided the rumors aren’t true.”_

_“When your boundless ambition makes you Chief, you’ll probably get rid of any retirement. Because you need a life, Veld.”_

_As if to prove his point, Veld shoved more of the filing at him. He’d long since given up making him read—_

—-

“You’re doing what Veld does, talking circles around my question. Which is kind of impressive, but annoying.”

Vincent was horrendously fond of the fact that their daughter had all of the tact of a cactuar.

“Apologies. Just enjoying clarity of memory. Haven’t had that for some time.”

“Yeah, it’s obvious some serious shit went down, considering you’re supposed to be near Veld’s age and you look mine.”

He glanced over at Veld to wordlessly confirm the obvious, that he hadn’t gotten to the completely ridiculous part of his story. He’d been emotionally closed on his best days, that omission could only mean that Vincent was going to come back from the inevitably awful fight and marry his stupid ass. Surely that was legal by now.

“I got hit by science a little hard.”

Elfe had the audacity to grin about that. “Heh, me too.”

Veld looked like he either wanted to strangle or hug the both of them. 

But there were few times someone got to come back from the dead and tell their own narrative. There had been revisions, of course, as the fragmented parts of his mind had put things back together in the wrong order. 

“Did it kill you too?”

—

_There probably should have been a fight the one time he needed it. _

_Felicia wasn’t even speaking yet, but he could tell the way her eyes followed him that she knew he was a separate entity from Veld, and that she was happy to see him too. He wasn’t brave enough to tell him that he didn’t have to raise her alone, that staying with him wasn’t intended to be temporary. _

_Veld had left her with the babysitter to see him off on the last truck to Nibelheim, a squeeze of the hand the only indication of his trepidation._

_He hadn’t really talked much with Hojo and Lucrecia since they had been together, back in school, back when they were younger, less settled._

_He should have been happy for them, knowing they were starting a family. Vincent should have been a comforting old presence while Lucrecia finally proved that nagging hypothesis she’d never quite been able to pin down, and Hojo could finally get that regeneration work funded._

_But there were voices in that house, they whispered into every crevice and ghosts that shadowed every glance. _

_When she patted her belly and spoke of **progress** his reaction wasn’t logical, he could only see the eyes of a small child that followed him because she knew him._

_Getting shot in the lung didn’t give him the chance to mention what poor stance his executioner had used, he could only cough out the laughs that someone who knew that they were well and truly fucked for no discernible reason could._

_There should have been a fight, maybe more of them could live._

—-

“So you see, the sentence fits the crime.”

Vincent never had much conviction for punishment, and only guilt in his inability to separate fact from insanity—he’d wait until he was certain the immediate threat was gone to go into the rest of the story. But there was a part of his mind that manifested his hysteria that wouldn’t let him finish without some kind of twisted moral.

“You’re telling me that you picked a fight with a hyper-intelligent pregnant woman who was injecting herself with crazy juice?”

Veld looked, frankly, a mess, and considering how direct he was being Vincent knew better than to actually approach. But out of the two of them he’d always been more emotional, even if he tended to redirect it into his work, or being the most popular father with the Shinra day care workers. 

“Dad.”

Elfe caused them both to stop being on their bullshit for a few minutes and look at her. Vincent couldn’t help feeling that maybe there was a future where she could in fact change the world.

“I spent years looking for him, Elfe. Then years mourning you. I have been the last one alive for so long that I almost forgot what it was like to not be that anymore. You find the strangest ways to cope in order to function.”

“Just don’t be an asshole about it.”

Yes, he would destroy the remains of someone else’s child a thousand times over if it meant he could be in a room again with these people, laughing off the fact that somehow they had _lived._

—

“You’re coming back, right?”

He’d have to leave soon if he was going to catch up to the rendez-vous place where the rest of his erstwhile allies were going to be. Naturally Elfe was awake at the earliest hours of the morning to check in with him.

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll do. You have to. I don’t think there’s any other choice.”

He’d made sure Veld was worn out enough, not because he wanted to slip away undetected, but more that some conversations were better had after, than before. But Elfe wouldn’t wait for that kind of thing.

“What will happen if I don’t?”

“I’ll be pissed. Use your imagination.”

Nothing would be easy. Vincent wanted to stop the clock long enough to catch up, but even he knew deep down that none of the things that had paused his life would really last. Standing still, even in places he wanted to be would accomplish nothing.

“Noted. I’m sure we’ll find a way to get back in touch.”

It was very different to dream--fitfully or not--for thirty years instead of living them. You couldn’t seamlessly fit sand back into the hourglass as it was leaking. 

“If you know anything about my father or I, you know that we’ll find you.” She smiled, because it really was affection at the base of the threat.

Of course you could just smash the damn hourglass and get on with things. “I can always give good chase.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drakonlily, I know this took a long time but I hope you enjoyed it. <3


End file.
